Reflections... Inspired by Africa

Painting fingernails of some Ugandan children... even boys loved it! :)

We helped Amazima Ministries serve food (rice, beans, chicken soup) to about 300-400 children.
They eat every bit of the food on their plate, with their fingers. They do this every week. They also send a bag of food home with the children to bring to their families.
In addition, we handed out new underwear to every one of these children.
They always wanted the ones with prints and characters! :)

Here is a family outside the border watching all that was going on. I decided to go and meet these women. One woman knew a little English, but a young man a part of the program came up behind me and asked to translate. After telling more about what we were doing here, I began to share about what Christ had done for me and what he did for them too. They accepted Christ that day, and many children around me also prayed. I encouraged them to walk with the Lord and briefly discussed what that meant.
I will continue to pray they will seek after Him.

These children are in long lines waiting to get one boiled egg each.

The children are rinsing their hands after lunch. This water tower/well is a recent addition by Amazima. It collects rain water and has a charcoal/sulfur filter. It is the only pure water around, so they use it sparingly.

"How was your trip?" is a question I knew I would face when I came home. So here are a few words that answer this question...

Amazing. Overwhelming. Disturbing. Moving. Heart breaking. Wonderful. Awful. Beautiful. Unbelievable. Life-changing.

These are just a few words I can think of right now, but my mind is still racing and swirling with all of these faces I am still seeing when I go to sleep at night and when I wake up in the morning. God has entrusted me and my new friends with this experience... this information... and I know I need to do something more. I am just praying He will reveal that to me. Some things I already know and will share with you, but there is also something more... and now I am waiting for Him to show me.

I am still processing this experience and almost don't even know where to begin, so I guess I will just share a little bit at a time using pictures to tell stories. There are still so many experiences we had, people we met, places we went, and things we saw that we just couldn't capture in a photo. So my blog entries in the next few weeks reflecting on these things may be random as they come.

These are just a few pics from Uganda and Amazima Ministries day that are special to me. When we arrived they were singing songs, sitting down, and then listened to a wonderful man tell a Bible story. Soon, we were painting fingernails, face painting, playing jump-rope, soccer, doing different crafts, braiding hair, and loving on the children any way we knew how. It was a wonderful, bright, and uplifting day! Thank you Lord for the work that Amazima Ministries is doing in Uganda!